


Where Do We Go From Here?

by Hunter_inthe_tardis



Series: Where Do We Go From Here? [1]
Category: Original Work, zombies - Fandom
Genre: Anarchy, F/M, Gen, Multi, Social Commentary, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-21 00:52:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4808687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hunter_inthe_tardis/pseuds/Hunter_inthe_tardis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Original idea/free-write about a simple young man who struggled to fit into the world he knew, and may find a place for him in this evolving world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Harold and Felix

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have an ending for this. I'm just exploring as I go. Let me know what you think. Thank you for reading!

“Don’t stop trying. Once you’ve stopped trying everything will just grind to a halt faster than you think.” Poignant words coming from a man sitting in a gutter. His formerly pinstriped suit sagging around his shoulders and wrinkled and stained in places that made little sense; as though he’d been crumpled into a gym bag then had a day old nacho cheese burrito stuffed in on top of him. The smell wafting off of his person was unlike anything Harold had ever encountered. In fact the pinstriped man didn’t have any identifiable smell at all. He was a mixture of sweet and sour, bile and milk, piss and apples. As soon as Harold felt he’d put a finger on what bodily function had produced such a stench it seemed to shift within his nostrils and become something else entirely. The stench was intriguing that way, in that you wanted to identify it, though it was putrid, and continued to inhale it in effort to identify it, though it made you gag.  
Harold glanced up the dimly lit street. The street lamps barely illuminated an overgrown yet sparse grass littered in trash and other flotsam that drifted through a neighborhood that a month ago had been a happy serene place. Children played here, adults chatted to each other. It had been your typical happy american suburb. Now though all that was gone.   
How was it that just a month a go everything had been so different, Harold wondered, this street was bright and clean. People had their shit together. More importantly, why had it changed? Some people ventured theories, if they were up for venturing anything at all. Filthy Pinstripe (What had he been? A banker, a lawyer, a CEO?) seemed to think that people just stopped trying. The lack of effort was pretty apparent, but what struck Harold, was that it all just seemed to happen at once. All of society had lapsed into an immediate and perpetual state of apathy, in synchrony, as though someone had simply flipped a switch on giving a fuck.  
Harold showed up to work three Tuesdays ago 20 minutes late, which was earlier than normal. Something always seemed to happen to make him run behind. Just getting out the door before work started actually seemed impossible, and if he did happen to be on time something happened on his commute to set him back at least half an hour. Once he forgot his dog Felix was still in the car from their adventure the night before. Felix loved the car and would spend hours sleeping in the backseat, totally content, but Harold couldn’t leave him back there while he was at work. Someone would surely report a dog that looked half dead locked in a car. So he’d turned around after making it to the parking garage at work and headed home to coax the decrepit old dog into the house.   
Felix had been around so long Harold forgot how they’d ended up together. If you’d asked him he would have assumed that one of his girlfriends, roommates, roomates’ girlfriends, or a passer through had left Felix when they’d left. Felix might have been a stray that stayed around, but no he wouldn’t have a name like Felix as a stray. Harold had a vague memory of a dog in college that wore one of those green vests that meant they were supposed to help you in some way. Maybe someone had given him Felix as a seizure predictor.   
***  
Harold slowly drifted back from pondering his dog’s existence in his life to that day three weeks ago when he’d shown up to work to find that no one was there.  
The place was completely empty. A ghost town. Harold peeked into the break room, then the conference cubicle, no one. None of the computers seemed to be on. The whole floor was missing that warm hum that came from at least 125 machines running at once. Even stranger none of the phones were ringing. Harold worked in the customer care department for a major satellite television provider. On a Tuesday morning, the phones should have been ringing off the hook with callers complaining about their service or how the remote hadn’t worked (9 times out of ten the batteries simply needed to be replaced). There was only silence.   
Halfway down the makeshift hallway between cubicles a janitor’s cart stood. Harold walked towards it regarding each cubicle as he passed, each one empty and dark. No one. Finally he got to the cart. A glass cleaner spray bottle and a microfiber rag sat on Jim’s desk. Where Jim should have been, setting his own fantasy football team while lazily listening to a caller complain that his automated recording services had cut off the overtime on last night’s football game. No Jim. No sign of the janitor either. Harold continued past the cart and headed for Olivia’s desk. If anyone should be here it was Olivia.   
As he passed desks on his way to O’s desk, he noticed that none of the trash can’s after  
Jim’s desk had been emptied. Everything looked just has it had when the office had emptied out last night. Yesterday’s lunch in the bins and bits of paper on the floor. They hadn’t vacuumed either.  
Olivia’s cubicle looked much like it always had, wherever she had been stationed, plastered with Internet memes, inspirational and humorous, and animal bobbleheads perched on every available surface. Some of them wiggled at him.


	2. Intro to O

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introducing, Our Lady of Baddassery

Every time she’d gotten a promotion (three so far this year) management moved her to a different cubicle. Why they felt the need to move her was beyond Harold. The “promotions” were so marginal, so useless, the names so vague to begin with that one was never really sure what was different after the promotion, moving Olivia seemed to be the only way anyone knew something had changed. But each time she packed up her cubicle, including all of those stupid plastic bobbleheads, and carted them to her new area. The piled up so high out of the copy paper box that their ridiculous anthropomorphized heads poked out and seemed like they were staring down at you as Olivia passed on her way up the company ladder. 

Olivia was already a tall woman, at five foot eleven inches, but she always wore heels, putting her well over six feet. She also insisted on carrying that box of bobbleheads above her own head as she squeezed through the walkways. The effect was that those stupid plastic faces and the stationary bodies they belonged to, were too precious to be transported through the atmosphere the call center peasants breathed. The needed to be carried regally above everyone and through the office, smiling and nodding in supreme idiocy at the peons, while their Queen guided them to their new home.

Many of Harold’s co-workers found Olivia obnoxious, some of them outwardly despised and mocked her. Harold didn’t mind her at all; he didn’t see himself in competition with her and so had no reason to dislike her. Though the people that poked fun at her to her face, or said nasty things behind their back became the objects of Harold’s despise, which was pretty hard to do, and fairly impossible to notice. Harold didn’t care about his job, it paid the bills, he showed up and did as little as was expected of him, and expected nothing but his health insurance or paycheck in return. This wasn’t so much different from the other people who worked in the call center, except that, Harold noticed, many people felt entitled to a raise or promotion simply for showing up and working. Olivia would always go above and beyond in helping others; training new employees, volunteering for projects with the management, coming up with new ways of dealing with difficult customers. She was motivated. She deserved more than what management begrudgingly gave her, at least that's what Harold thought. Most of his co-workers he felt nothing for, aside from the few that had roused him to the point of dislike. 

He liked O. She was really something special, but she did tend to rub certain people the wrong way. She came off as a brown-noser and a goodie-two-shoes. If she realized you were one of the folks who did minimal work and expected maximum payout, she acted more cooly towards you. She was always warm to Harold. Harold never asked for anything, but she would check in on him from time to time. Once after, missing so much time due to his condition, he had caught a nasty cold. Having no sick time remaining, he came to work anyway (it was more effort than he’d ever put in before), and Olivia had come to check up on him throughout the week. After realizing he was sick, she brought him tea and homemade soup. She made sure he took his breaks. Later he found out she had tried to start a program where employees with a surplus of sick time, could donate to a co-worker in need. Management decided to adopt the program, but slice the sick time given to an employee by three-quarters, so that one would have to donate 32 hours to a friend for them to be able to take 8 hours off. It was criminal, and no one used it.

Harold also speculated that because Olivia was strikingly beautiful and exotic as well as tall, motivated and professional, she raised the ire of men who did not want to listen to a woman who looked like someone they would try to sleep with, take a nude picture of, and then never call again. He also suspected that women were jealous of O’s looks. Harold felt that if you had to have a boss, it might as well be an imposing, demanding, intelligent woman who could also be kind. 

It was the kind of crush that gets fully realized. Olivia was so different from Harold and so far out of his league that dating her never crossed his mind. He couldn’t even fantasize about her; it felt weirdly wrong, as though he was disrespecting her. It made him feel embarrassed. Because Harold thought a lot, but cared about little, and was hardly ever moved to action, he found his fascination with Olivia intriguing but not stressful or troubling. It just was.

In strong contradiction to her person, was her taste in office decorations. Harold had puzzled over this as much as he’d puzzled over other aspects of Olivia’s existence. What would possess such a competent woman to keep such silly trinkets. There was no rhyme or reason to the bobble heads, they spanned from anime cats to major league baseball players. All they had in common was that their heads wiggled when touched. 

Harold remembered that some of the heads were wiggling.


	3. Heros Meet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So Harold finds Olivia.

“O? Olivia?” Harold looked around the empty cubicle, then scanned the empty call center. No one. Silence. 

Not silence. Harold could hear a very muffled, sharp intake of breath. The heads started bobbling again. Harold crouched down and peered beneath the desk. She didn’t look like Olivia, but it was her. Olivia would never come to work wearing fleece pajama bottoms with a rude bunny printed all over them. Olivia’s hair didn’t stick up all over the place, she left it natural, but coiffed, this person’s hair looked like a crazed wild maniac. 

Enormous dark brown eyes stared at him. “What’s happening?” whispered the person hiding beneath Olivia’s desk.   
“I don’t know. It is Tuesday, right?” Harold often got the days mixed up. Some things just didn’t click right with him. Olivia, on the other hand, would never forget which day of the week it was. She was the kind of person that could be stranded on a desert island for 5 years and still tell you what the date was. 

“I-I think so. Yesterday seems like it was Monday and that makes today Tuesday.” Olivia’s words were slow and thick, as though she was struggling to get them to come out of her mouth. Harold knew the feeling.

“Why are you wearing pj’s?” 'O', he thought. He didn’t say her nickname outloud. He wasn’t sure she was the kind of person that went in for nicknames, but "O" was how he thought of her in his head.

“I’m not sure. I woke up this morning and I knew I should be at work but I just didn’t care very much. Showering and getting dressed just seemed like too much effort. I didn’t have it in me.” She got better as she talked; the words started flowing easier.

“You didn’t want to shower or get dressed but you wanted to be at work?” 

“It seemed right.”

“Well nothing about this place seems right.” Harold held his hand out to Olivia. As she reached for his hand Harold could see the tips of her fingers tremble and hear her swallow hard. He helped her up. Even without shoes, she was taller than him by at least an inch.

She was wearing a promotional sweatshirt form a new show on a premire channel. It was at least three sizes too big for her.

“It will be ok” Even before the words were out of his mouth Harold knew that was stupid. It was what people said and it was meant to be reassuring, but it was still stupid. Harold wasn’t even sure what “it” he was referring to, how “it” happened, and he certainly had no idea whether “it” would be ok.

“I’m sorry, that was a stu-”

“Don’t. Neither one of us know what’s happening. It seems at this point you could speak complete gibberish and it would make as much sense as anything else. For all the sense that’s left, at least.”

Olivia was silent then, and she studied Harold carefully. He looked much like he did any other day. Slightly sloppy and frumpy. His mousey brown hair full of cowlicks and places where he had clearly rested his head on the back of a couch or a pillow. Other people with this appearance would have infuriated her. Laziness, carelessness, entitlement to a life they weren’t willing to work for, these things made her far more angry than anything else she could fathom. She knew what was said behind her back and the jealousy that many of her co-workers felt. Fuck them. Jealous of what? Her work ethic, her insatiable need to rise and perfect her self and her work? Those are things that everyone could have, she thought. If they only truly wanted them. She knew most of her co-workers truly didn’t want to be there; they would rather be almost anywhere else. They did it because it was what was expected of them, and they were sheep. Discontent sheep. 

Harold though. To her it seemed that Harold was exactly where he wanted to be. That he had no reason to go anywhere else. He didn’t expect to be rewarded for simply doing what was asked of him, as though it was a huge inconvenience. He just did what was expected. No more, no less. He was the antithesis of what business schools, teachers, counselors and career coaches had been ingraining in people. Keep reaching, even if you don’t want to. Keep reaching. You’re weak if you don’t try to do better, to be better. Olivia loved moving through things, going on to the next level, even if they were small. She felt bored and stifled if she stayed in one position too long. She wanted new challenges and new things to learn. It wasn’t all about improving herself, it was also about her insatiable need to experience new things, even within a call center. To her, the things that she’d heard in school and from her supervisors, about improving herself, and showing great promise was garbage. If she bought into that, she’d be just as selfish and entitled as the co-workers she hated. Look at me! Look at me! Give me a prize because I’m following the rules. I’m doing what I was told! Olivia never did anything because she was told. She did things because she wanted to. Right now, she wanted to know what the fuck was happening.

Harold watched Olivia watch him. First her eyes looked dull and tired. Then they started to change, like he could watch them come into focus.

“Let’s see what we can find out, eh?”

Olivia sat down in her office chair and motioned for Harold to grab Joyce’s across the way. He hesitated and she explained “Look, it’s not like she’s likely to show up any minute right?” So he wheeled it over and plopped down next to her as she booted up her computer. 

She opened the company email, nothing. Company homepage in the internet browser, nothing new. “Try the news.” Harold suggested. Olivia smiled at him. 

“People think you’re dumb you know. I don’t think so, though.” She felt bad telling him what other people thought, but it just sort of slipped out. She wanted to encourage him, by showing him how he was different than what people expected him to be, but it came out as an insult.

He didn’t reply, so she navigated to the local news stream. 

No new updates since 10:12 pm the night before. Even that one was half finished. Olivia fished her phone from the kangaroo pocket of her gigantic sweatshirt, and opened her social media applications. 

“Wow. No one has posted anything since last night?!”

Harold looked at Olivia. He didn’t use social media, but he knew that other people used it profusely to keep people up to date on their lives. He frequently saw his co-workers covertly opening browsers or scrolling through their phones, tapping and swiping away. It seemed exhausting to keep up both a real life and virtual presence. 

As they stared at each other, pondering what would happen to stop all the selfies, pictures of food, passive agressive, indirect statuses, and mundane workout updates, a loud rude noise errupted from back near Jim’s desk.

“That sounded like-”

“A fart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is near the end of what I have so far. Please let me know what you think and add suggestions as you like.


End file.
